


I'm still applied to what you are

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Best Friends, Bittersweet, Character Study, Family, Family Fluff, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 23:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2206317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Rory does not know why he follows her, really. It might be hearing in one sentence the words “danger” and “heights” and “thrill”. That and the exhilarated smile she had on while saying those words. She spread them like butter on toast rather than speaking them.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Rory tries to complete the puzzle that is his daughter/best friend/terrifying Doctor in archaeology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm still applied to what you are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GrumpyJenn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyJenn/gifts).



> It writes again!
> 
> Title from _All the Trees of the Field will clap their Hands_ by Sufjan Stevens
> 
> Thanks to GUS for the beta-reading. Any remaining mistake is mine.

Rory does not know why he follows her, really. It might be hearing in one sentence the words “danger” and “heights” and “thrill”. That and the exhilarated smile she had on while saying those words. She spread them like butter on toast rather than speaking them.

“What are you up to?” he asks, dubious and a little not as thrilled as her, taking note of the large khaki bag peeking out the hallway. His mind is elsewhere, certainly not to the chores he assigned to himself this morning while the Doctor and Amy are busy on the arcade games planet acquiring new arcade games for the TARDIS. He doesn’t feel home in the TARDIS kitchen without Amy’s laughter and the Doctor’s gibberish to fill its immaculate alienness.

So he reorganises the kitchen hardware and notices River trying to sneak out with big auspicious bags on the shoulders and words like “danger” on the lips.

She leans on the doorframe and beams, hair still shuffled by sleep.

“Literally up.”

She came home late last night, unexpected and silent –quiet, unremarked, careful. Too quiet for a member of their family. Finding her still sleeping in the morning, neither the Doctor nor Amy had the heart to wake her up before going out. The fussing would have been unnecessary.

She never leaves without saying ‘hello’ to her old parents.

He shakes his head, a strand of incredulousness getting his hands tangled as he let go of the duster anywhere on the working panel.

“Up ?” He can only repeat blankly.

In answer, she laughs a childish spring of notes that reminds him of Amy, without the throatiness. Very much Mels’.

He moves closer, folds his arms over his chest and frowns.

“I'm going block climbing on the Geeshees. Those are the golden mountains of Pinzins in the 'Zins System. Gorgeous site, wild, isolated. Great climbing path, even for training. Been planning it for weeks, but with the last break-out and the Bone Meadows and whatnot I just kept postponing.”

He pulls discreetly on the hem of his shirt; Stormcage gives him cold sweat.

“I didn't know you climbed. Really didn't suspect it.”

She brushes a loose strand off her face and he notices her hair is crammed up in a bun of sorts. So much hair, even tied up, it’s a mess.

“I mean, obviously you are rather sporty, but I didn't picture you doing … outdoors. I was under the impression you were the kung fu or yoga type or even swimming.”

Or the con artist type, tattoos spread on her loins and matches lit on the sole of her shoes, doing push-ups in her cell. The stories he _tells_ himself about his daughter…

He should have the courage to ask. And then he is old enough not to ask about swimming when he knows Mels always pinches her nose before jumping. Water is the only prison she can’t keep out of her body.

Same woman. Same habit to throw her head back and laugh it off.

“Oh, hate swimming.” She adds a dismissive hand wave for good measure. “And avoid those indoors training stuff if I can help it and to be fair, often, I can't.” A glimpse over her shoulder and she stretches a leg behind to drag the large bag by its strap and send it gliding before her. Cinematic vision. His daughter is a superhero. “I am still in _prison_.” Bent over its content, she checks and replaces in the bag clinkering buckles and loops, and winks at him through the tumbling curls. “But I love the _fighting_ , it is fun.”

She would.

“And climbing is fun?” He doesn’t bother to hide his scepticism. “A bit dangerous I suppose. And you get to fall from high spots, which you enjoy according to the Doctor's reports.”

“Ah, he does reports on me? That's both gratifying and a bit unsettling. I suppose he hasn't come to writing them down? I've broken every lock of every trunk he ever had or will have and found nothing of the sort. But I did find very interesting pictures of you, Daddy. Those gams! No wonder he had you dressed in a suit of roman armour.”

His hands jolt up and open before him, surrendering. She’s ruthless in trying to deconstruct him, to rebuild him, like a friend would. He cannot really hide from his daughter when she has tucked in her brain photos of him drunk and half-naked, splayed on the gymnasium’s roof. He owes her some of his best childhood memories and he knows they are even.

Perhaps here their relationship fails to match: he loved Melody and Mels, he owes River.

Her smile is fond though; not that of a friend, but of a daughter who cannot wait to become his friend. She understands more about his uneasiness than she lets it appear. Grown up and finished, River is delivered as a page announced by the teacher to be read for next class. He cannot skip it and is curious about what is in store for him. It remains an exercise.

He fashions a scold for her.

“I am trying to show genuine interest in your interests and hobbies, River. Like a father with his daughter.” She bites her bottom lip and stares back, shameless. “Please try and stop flirting. With me. That's just disturbing.”

“Sorry. Innuendos just come naturally around you, don't know why. So the climbing, yes, I favour it to develop my Latissimus Dorsi.” He nods, not even knowing if she remembers that from their bored revisions or from being stuck on a rock face pursued by aliens. Every time he imagines a life for her rather than ask, he feels like fleeing and mourning Melody. He could refuse to glue them, River and Melody. It would be so easy. Much easier than watching pride bloom on Melody’s face when she arches her back and fills her lungs, looking like a five-year old, looking like a fifty-year old.

“Still not much of an expert and lacking in practice due to cell confinement. It does wonder with tension though. Straining and draining and frustrating, especially with Urs, he pesters me a lot about my footwork, but when you reach the top, trembling and panting, God you're on top of the world.” She pauses, dives head first into the bag and retrieves the tiniest skippers he has ever seen. He remembers that thing from their summer camp escape revisions. Having a violent Houdini as your best friend has its perks.

“Nea though.” She wavers, finger brushing the metal. “I’m never so sure about her accompanying me; she’s a bit talkative and doesn’t always secure me as much as I’d like. I may practice block to-”

“Okay. Do you want me to come?”

River’s eyes shoot up to find a point between his eyebrows, abandoning the skippers. It’s awkward. She looks stunned and small, almost touched. An exploration of dark tunnels under New York might have come to her mind. Protecting her had not been voluntary then.

“It’s okay, I never fall you know. I may not be as gracious as a cat when climbing, yet. But not falling to my death is surprisingly something I’m very good at.”

Protecting her is his job.

“Still. Call off Nea, I’m coming with you.”

 

***

 

He follows her, gripping sickly to her vortex manipulator with one hand and her heavy army bag with the other. They land at the feet of a slope covered in sparkly green grass.

“Where's the wall?” He asks, his eyes scanning a familiar, west-European-like landscape. Familiar if one could ignore the golden dust floating around every tree and piece of scenery.

Dark and sparkly woods in the distance, rounded summits, wild fields curving their way between the trees. Here and there, scintillating rocky paths, like golden scars in the mountains, some vertical cutting through the bumps, some gently climbing the slopes. The birds definitely sound like birds, but with extraterrestrial species he never knows where to stand and experience has proven him it’s far from preposterous to bet it could well be space cows twittering. Although, that would have to be space mountain goats since despite the apparent lack of climbing path in front of them, the landscape is definitely edges, slopes and very little flat land.

No climbing paths in sight.

He sighs.

“Don't tell. We get to walk there before we can climb anything.”

She attempts a mischievous approval in the form of a wink and a nod; her expression is somewhat softened by the quiet chirping atmosphere, nature breathing around them. He feels it too, and his long suffering resentment towards children not minding the parents in their old age fades into quiet joy. He did not expect her to be so like him in this regard.

The walk to the wall is a short unhastened stroll. They talk a little, timidly, he thinks, considering she is River and there is no topic she is prepared to back away from. Save for spoilers.

They carry the tone throughout the conversation as if River had never been an intergalactic part-alien part-human evil-doer and mischief manager, nonetheless daughter of two perfectly “normal” Leadworth-inhabiting human beings, albeit a little bounced back and forth in time and space. Rather, she acts like an adult. This is a bit of a surprise when not threatened to be erased from history.

Regularly, she surprises him: she’s not another Doctor, she’s not Mels. His hard-won intimacy with a death-cheater knucklehead he once knew does not extend to the woman walking by his side. Not by choice; he owes River not to rob her of her parents when they know who she is. Mels was their friend. River is their daughter.

But Mels died young. Melody younger even. Intimacy with River has to be honed and protected. From the Doctor’s blind affection, from the memory of Mels and Melody, from his own fear of being a father.

He still searches endlessly, traces of him in her step, in her whistling, in her smile, things he thought he caught as well in Mels and then he doesn’t know if Mels taught him how to be like his daughter or if he taught Mels reflexes she would keep beyond death, unto River Song. It hurts to think about her fiery eyes and short skirts and stupid filthy laughter that would always get them caught sneaking out. River’s laughter is filthy and dangerous and doesn’t get them caught when they are hiding in a dark corner.

At what point, he wonders, she became River Song? Berlin had been such a mess for every one of them. If they lost Mels, gained River, mixed the two, overlapped, blurred. He wouldn’t know. He can comprehend Mels’s changing into River as death only. Melody was human.

He asks, because, as she nonchalantly keeps her hand on the straps in a manner Amy often parodies, she is, most definitely, his daughter.

River remains silent for a few steps, testing her courage maybe, because she knows him too well not to read between the lines. Mels never begged for his love, even when he was unfair to her, even when he didn’t know about her memory blanks.

“It _was_ in Berlin.”

Her gaze follows upward the path into the woods and she carries on, coolly formal:

“In every child's development there is a moment when they realise they’re not the centre of the universe. It will surprise you but, before Berlin, I hadn't reached that point.”

Mels was a complicated girl, _his_ complicated girl he often prided himself in thinking. But at the time, when it all became too much, he could always say she was not their responsibility and retreat to his home.

He was occasionally a selfish friend. He would not be a selfish father.

The trees part at last to reveal huge rocks planted in the ground like teeth and obviously much more passable as climbing paths than the slopes he first saw. Rory stands in awe before them, arms dangling. With just a hint of worry in the voice, he inquires as he helps River out of the straps keeping the bag on:

“Is it safe?” The bag lands on the floor with cankerous enthusiasm and Rory wonders how she is going to climb with that much metal. “Are you sure the rock face isn't just going to crumble on us while we climb?”

River rolls her eyes and starts inspecting the walls.

“Says the man who actually tries and walks up a gravitationally compromised dimensionally transcendental space-ship without any safety.”

“You can’t know about this time! You weren’t there, were you? Are you invisible as well? Not that I believe you are capable of resisting being noticed. But the invisibility cloak could be something you stole from the future.”

The snark earns him a cheeky, telling look.

“What? Did Amy tell you about this?”

River holds up two fingers.

“Seriously, two mums? I never signed up for this. We should have a serious talk with her.”

The cheekiness is unbridled now, from her nose to the way she leafs through her climbing path book.

He ought to talk to her about those cheeky looks. Ironically uttering the words "A little more respect for your elders" to his child has always been a dream of his. But River, very much like Amy, is rather sensible and could stop altogether every cheeky remark. And he loves that she is confident enough around them to be cheeky.

“I could arrange that.” Deadly serious, she makes a non-committal pout. “I’m not sure you’ll find the “how” enjoyable. And it has to be without his knowing because he would, well, I’m not sure there’ll be much talking on our part.”

Their eyes meet, suddenly wicked.

“The Doctor is rather possessive of his TARDIS. I’ll get Amy to introduce him to the Sims.”

 

***

 

Wordlessly, they exchange the water jug. Grey with dust, her hand is resting on the warm stone between them.

He lifts it, delicately, as he did years ago for him, maybe centuries for her, to study the thin articulations. And where there was nothing but pinkness and rotundity before, clenched on fuzzy dreams and colours, there is now strength and lines, veins protruding and pumping. Hands of a killer, a doctor, a wife, hands of a superhero; his daughter. She lets him alone in his study, all too aware of what he is seeing and what he cannot find anymore.

It is like finding older Amy on Apalapucia and coming to terms with the fact she had a life, far from him, during thirty years.

No matter how long he would offer to sit with her and talk and be patient, he would not have lived those years with her. It is realising she had stayed lean and tall, hair long, when he had always thought she would shrink and round, going for shorter hair –she would have been cute. He never thinks of Amy as cute. It is finding out that accent of hers would not have faded a jot and grow tight and soft and British and boring as he expected. It is discovering that tiny scar on the arc of her jaw, memory of a school fight, would eventually disappear. His fingers tremble and fall off River’s palm, holding up by skimming to the wrist and examining the skin there.

“You don’t have it anymore.”

At the corner of his eyes, River stills, eyes glazing as she is trying to follow him –centuries to leaf through, he knows how long it takes. With vast memory come paper cuts masquerading as wrinkle. He can remember himself growing old. And so can River.

Understanding snaps on her face and wakes her features; she smiles, leaning in to get a closer look at the wrist, rather than bringing it to her. His hold on hers is light, yet he feels her completely still and confident.

“That’s a shame. I’ve always liked that scar, not necessarily the series of events that led to it, but the afternoon after. Baking cream pies and being pampered by you two… it was like being,” she stops, thoughts drifting and he wonders if she is actually hiding her emotions from him. He pinches his lips and she exhales.

“Like being a child.”

“You scared us.”

She scares him. Raised into all the parenting mistakes he already made, however anachronic; grown into friendship taken from cuttings and childish vows masterminded. And she is not a child anymore. His daughter, she scares him straight to death.

Her hand is around his now. Mending. Voice soft and coming from the edge of dawn, when they would wake up from nightmares, all of them, in Amy’s room, and fill their fears with whispers.

“I know, I scared myself. I think it was me realising that even if I could fix my body as much as I wanted to, it could hurt a lot without regenerating.”

 _I can fix this_ , Mels would say and improvise an epic battle between history books and the Doctor’s dolls. Amy would soon be captivated, leading her troops, Rory would disapprove and try to rescue the books they were invariably supposed to read over the week-end.

Mels’ nightmares were watching over her shoulders, unheard.

His daughter’s monsters were real. And he didn’t know his little girl was one of them. But no alternative timelines as leeway. He is condemned to guess her when she was right before his eyes, for a whole childhood.

She played with them or counted the number of ways she could trap the Doctor. She learnt football or made sure her muscles stayed hard and deadly. She loved them or learnt to.

Chances are, she doesn’t remember.  All that because her monsters were real.

“But even then, you knew you were going to outlive us. You knew who you were.” His tongue nearly misses the ‘who’ heading straight for the ‘what’. “We were just small parts of your life. You had lived long before, you would live long after.”

His hand falls on the stone, bluntly, and when he looks up she is already snatching her climbing slippers and retrieving the rope from the wall.

“I could not remember that far back,” without a look at him. “I did not think that far ahead.”

It haunts him, the number of things he cannot fix for his daughter, he cannot ask to his friend, he cannot expect from River.

 

***

 

The wall is warm against his thighs, inviting but coarse. It is tempting to hang there and talk, River being strong enough to keep him hoisted up, dangling. He tries to ignore how small she is from his spot.  There’s a flower crouching out from a hole to his left and probably some alien insects waiting for his hand. Gaze up, he seeks another spot to place his hand and finds the luminous rock face climbing higher, mocking. Green and gold leaves peak from the top, definitely closer than when he was on the ground and he closes his eyes.

“Why do you like falling so much?” he shouts, maybe for himself, out of frustration.

“Because finding there’s someone to catch me or that I can actually figure something in mid air makes me feel wanted, both by loved ones and myself. There were times I didn’t want to be able to save myself.”

His fists clench. Her tone is matter of fact and Mels has decided to make him pay for his insensitivity. Or River is simply talking to him. Because climbing is freeing and relaxing and draining and she is alone with her father.  It would not be the first time.

“Relax, you’ll have cramps if you hold the stone like that. Don’t flip out. I am the same person, Rory. It didn’t feel right telling you about it. A girl’s allowed to keep some things to herself. I grew up. I don’t know why you drink ice tea either? You used to hate it.”

“Brian kinda dared me to like it. It’s refreshing.”

He hears her make a face and takes a deep breath to hoist himself up to a conveniently placed slit.

“There you are. I suggest you immediately move to your left because that hold is exhausting to keep. Of course you find it refreshing. I feel like there’s never been a time in your life when you weren’t dad-like. You were born a dad.”

He moves to his left following protruding stones that seem to go somewhere. Talking to spiders and rocks definitely was not his idea of rock climbing. But between his mad son in law and his mad wife, he finds little time to have conversations that are not stolen with River. Stolen from her, more often than not. In looks and attentions she has for him. And it could be enough. It had been when he learnt to trust River.

But he craves words, his daughter’s. Her words have the remarkable ability to belong to his childhood as well as to pure formalism. River will talk about Aunt Sharon and _Gluteus Maximus_ and confess she inherited the latter from the former.

“That’s insulting. You knew me when I was at the peak of my attractiveness and cool.”

Her laughter soars, filling the confined space between the rock, the trees, the moss and the sky. His hands are killing him, and his cheeks; he’s been smiling like an idiot for a minute. He forgot just how he loved Mels, how infuriating and liberating she was, how close they all were. She taught him how to do cartwheels.

“Yeah, that time in Blackpool doesn’t count and I am still your daughter, remember? I thought you said to stop with the flirting.”

“Well, the flirting is bizarre.” The banter is knocked out of his lungs by exhaustion. For how long has he been hanging to that rock? “I’m stuck,” he manages to cry and look down.

She’s a ball of gold and green, a pair of eyes staring up, linked to him by the rope.

“Do you want me to belay you down? You can sit, you have a tight rope. I got you.”

She always does.  He cannot remember a time when she did not have their back. Mels was the town’s terror, but he never felt threatened by her. They could huddle on the Ponds’ sofa, giggling in front of Ghost Busters, and Mels’ blood-curdling roar brought the police in the living room. But hours later, in the darkness, worried, he was playing with her hair. Her breathing was telling him she was awake.

To this day he wonders if the "Thank you" she whispered to him in the morning was for keeping her away from her nightmares or for providing her with the only chance to have her hair combed by her father.

“I want to go on, but I don’t know where to go.”

“Take a minute, lay back. You’re belayed tight.  When you’re ready, look up. Or don’t. You can’t see the next hold, but there’s a nice bucket above you, right. Just try and feel it.” He follows her indications and progresses up lightly, trusting her. She’s a good partner, she’s a good teacher. And when she says “Nice. You’re nearly there,” he can almost hear his father's voice. He freezes and shuts his eyes, because he knows that, looking down, he will only find the face of Doctor Song.

“The last part is a ladder.” Her voice keeps going, a steady flow matching his pace, not missing a beat. She must be an incredible teacher. “You just have to reach that spot, on your right. See the step like Ms Gatiss’ dog? You’ll have to pivot your hips to catch this one.”

 “I must look ridiculous. If Men were intended to climb, they would have been made differently. But then considering the number of things our bodies are not designed for... We are a really rubbish species, you know that?”

He passes the tricky bit, the last effort sending jolts of pride and adrenaline through to his brain. Three holds until the top. Carved like steps in the stone. He laughs as much as his position allows it.

Below, River shakes her mass of hair. Under the sun and from a distance, it looks like a big ball of sunshine.

 “Let me guess, you finished the book on alien physiology I gave you last Easter. Mind your left foot, you’ll be hindered for the next step.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You’ll have to switch foot.”

He growls. He can see why the Doctor hates her sometimes.

“Come on. I can almost touch the tree roots!”

“Just saying it’s the wrong foot.”

He can hear the exact position of her laughter lines. Mapping her face was never planned. It seems he did it all the same.

“I never thought there’ll come a day when I wish for a third foot.”

 

***

 

At some point, she loses her hold on the wall; she has climbed a foot only and the rope is loose at this height. Letting go of the rope, feet grounded, he opens his arms, receiving her with a loud groan as her elbow finds his collarbone. It is odd. It has been a little over a year since he held the little body of Melody Williams in his arms. She was so light and helpless. And now, he stumbles under her weight. River is already on her feet, apologising and enquiring about his shoulder.

It doesn’t even hurt his feelings. He thinks of physics class Saturday mornings and Mels winding up the teacher. He thinks of time travel being theorically possible and Mels burying the teacher under technicalities. He thinks of how he found the concept terrifying and of how hurt he suddenly is before his indifference to the subject. He thinks of how she can probably explain to him why it’s only natural a mind like his painlessly grasps time travel.

In what kind of twisted world the laws of physics dictate an exponential growth of the heart so that he can take the aching reality of his daughter, tiny bundle of fragility a year ago, now probably able to do a better job at carrying him?

Her staccato speech and joking curb as she notices his listless expression. She holds him at arm’s length, as if fearing his reaction. Silent. He can feel the expert, strong hold on his arm, see the tempered concern at the corner of her mouth, folded in a line even he had not time to grow yet.

Her physical presence is so painfully different from Mels. He wants to shake her until she drops her skin and Mels jumps out of this costume, these manners, these lines. Maybe that’s what he desperately wants to ask since the beginning. Mels, where did River bury her? They didn’t have time to know Melody, just to hold her and dream the best for her. It was telling more about themselves than her. So little they know about Melody, that every inflection in River’s voice settles as an evident continuation of their little girl’s nonsensical babbling. But Mels was loud and long by their side, and confident enough in her uniqueness to deny any resemblance to any being. Even her future self.

He has half a mind to panic and turn away from her, but instead blossoms in his chest the dull ache of another realisation. The same logic –or lack of- that led his daughter to be presented to him all grown up, before she was born, could let him encounter at any moment a dead River. Or rather let him visit a time when River is long gone. And buried.

And then he realises he doesn’t know if she will be buried by their side. He doesn’t even know if he will love her always. Teenage blood was shed to vow eternal friendship. None of their friends knows she exists, his father and in-laws even less so. He hopes there will come a day when he finds the heart to introduce her as an improbable friend they met during their honeymoon. He also fears this will be the day when River is defeated by her own ancient archaeologist hands, her alien all-knowing eyes, her unfamiliar space hair.

They won’t love her.

They won’t bury her under a Pond Earth-marble and she will die far from home.

He does not think before pulling her in and giving her a fierce hug, so clumsy her face comes crashing against his ear and he can feel her lashes brushing his cheek.

At the moment, he wants, childishly, never to let her go. He knows he cannot protect her always, has already failed to. He knows whatever his feelings are for her presently, there will come days when he would not stand the thought of her –of what she took from them, inevitably. The girl who wouldn’t let herself be rewritten so that they could have young Melody.

She’s not her mother.

_The days I can't have. Take them, please._

It would rewrite too much, so the Doctor said –he did rewrite entirely Amy’s childhood after all.

He has a right not to love her. He did love Melody, he still mourns Mels. But as today when she fell, he will let her down; she climbed too fast. She didn’t leave them a choice and left them to gasp and worry underneath, as she climbs to the stars. He finds shame and relief in accepting that he will be unfair to her, and despise her –they’ll have other children-, ultimately love her. Because she’s gorgeous and clever and mad and brilliant.

They lost their daughter to their daughter.

He wants to say he loves her, he’s sorry, he loves her, he is proud, he loves her, but the words tumble down his throat and clog up his very breath. Her embrace grows tighter, grows painful. His daughter is so strong she could break his bones.

He can’t ask her to regress to Melody for his own selfish desire.

First time he met River, she terrorised his general by destroying furniture. Or she burped and smiled at him with unfocused eyes in a casket snatched from the Evil Godmother. Or she mysteriously gave him a blank battered blue diary. Or she stepped in on a school fight to save Amy from bullies, but not the Headmaster.

It’s complicated.

 

***

 

He struggled to get into the hammock. It was waddling and intent to have him on the floor. He fell asleep. The air around is still and warm, fluffs of pollen hovering by. He is grateful for the hammock; a nice idea. He should install one in their garden.

The ruffle of the leaves causes him to pop his head out of the cocoon. River is sitting against a tree nearby, a book in hand, though her gaze is directed at the alien figure who just waddles out of the trees. It has the general appearance of a Sunday walker, hat and cane with impressive dusty walking shoes. It doesn’t notice them at first though, eyeing with an expression of delight and accomplishment the rock face glistening between the trees and the loveliness of the site. It startles when River rises to her feet, dusting off her trousers and welcoming the stranger with a nod of the head.

“I beg your pardon. I didn’t know you were here.”

The walker stands uneasy, as if he planned to install himself a hammock at that spot and found other hikers in its retreat. River offers a polite smile and chirps.

“That’s alright. You came from the Bloon spring? Nice walk, a bit steep in the forest.”

Rory jumps out of the hammock with relative dignity and seizes the cake atop River’s bag.

“Want a piece?”

River’s attempt to contrive her hilarity is a nice enough reward for his sudden rush of blood to the face. The stranger looks at him with slight nervosity before lighting up and unpacking to offer them a sip of its own beverage, some spicy plant extract from its home planet. The tea tastes surprisingly well with the cake and within minutes they are chatting about hobbies and professions. Turns out he is a sort of android nurse whose conversation is delightful. His field involves as much mechanics as medicine but the patients seem to be the same, whatever the galaxies, whatever the voltage.

Later, when they are packing under the dusk light, alone again, rested but sore, he asks:

“How did he know?”

“Sorry?” She blinks.

“How did he know you were my daughter? He said you looked a lot like your father.”

“Well, I do. Jenny teases me a lot about it and the Doctor can’t shut up about my nose.”

“Yes, you also look-“ He hesitates. “Slightly  older.”

River rolls her eyes before tilting her head and smiling.

“He is Francissan. They age backward.”

 

***

 

**Epilogue:**

 

“Doctor!”

“Amy! What on Jupiter is the problem?”

“What's that?”

“I don't know. It's a bag. Oh, spacey-wacey bag, bigger on the inside. Is that a harness?”

“And ropes. It's darn heavy. Why would you need that?”

“I don't have the slightest idea. Do I need climbing equipment? Old girl, what are you plotting?”

“Doctor, it’s not for you. Don't be ridiculous, I'm not even sure you could lift yourself on a ladder.”

“I'm stronger than I look. Remember Venice!”

“You and I remember Venice very differently. There's no way your feet can stay on a surface narrower than the width of your foot for ten seconds.”

“Maybe, but I can survive really high falls.”

“Good for you. I thought the point of scaling was making it to the top, not surviving as many falls as you can.”

“Actually, on Niagara, in the system of B'ster, that's the way they practice climbing.”

“Oh. Do they? Well, let them and don't bother to try. You are a five year old.”

“What are you two doing?”

“Rory! Your wife is harassing me again.”

“He's trying to kill himself. I want to prevent him from doing so.”

“Right. Did you open the bag and spill its content on the TARDIS floor like a bunch of clumsy cats? Why, oh why did you uncoil the ropes? It takes hours to put back together without River.”

The Doctor and Amy look at each other.

“Have you been spending father-daughter time with River?”

“I like River. She’s a great grown-up to hang up with. Not like you lot.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> To find: the obvious Avengers reference, the less obvious Arsenic and Old Lace semi-quote, the lame F. Scott Fitzgerald allusion, the misuse of a great slash mind.


End file.
